Chapter 168: Another Day in Kallid

Nara flashed a grin as she stepped through the silver fog door.

“I’ve got something special for One. Special. Friend~”

She waggled her finger, playing eenie, meenie, miney, mo. Eufemia rolled her eyes at her theatrics. She pulled the robe from her inventory in a magical flourish, as if she was a stage magician. Her audience was less than impressed despite the genuine magic, although John gave her a pitying applause.

“Ta-da! Did you guess? It’s for Encio.”

“Of course the prince—my apologies, honorary duke—gets his first. Color me surprised,” Eufemia groaned, very much not surprised.

Luck was Encio’s mistress, and she practically threw herself into his lap.

“What can I say?” Encio said, “Some people are just born with it all. It’s best it’s me and not someone else more insufferable.”

His insufferable tone made Eufemia’s lips curl into a frown, but her next words lacked the sharpness that she used against her enemies. “Is there such thing? Not even diamond rank magic can create someone more insufferable than you,” she paused, a smirk growing on her face. “Was your mimic better or worse than you? I’m betting it was nicer.”

Eufemia could name quite a few more people that were more insufferable than Encio, but that wasn’t the point.

Without looking at it’s effects, he passed his token on to Nara. She took it without complaint—it was what they had agreed upon previously, even if for their team it didn’t matter. Technically, her inventory was the safest one as well.

While the wind effects were a nice compliment to Encio’s skill set, iron rank equipment would be destroyed by bronze rank monsters, even if most crafted armor and weapons could be repaired or regenerate from extreme damage. He’d need to rank it up before it was useful for him.

It was their next room where Roscoe and the team encountered their first problem. It was a four person bronze-rank room, in the black hall where battles were fought in pitch black darkness. Eufemia was a necessary member in all these rooms, for her familiars and abilities provided the greatest amount of light. They were deliberating team composition when the nearby portal whirred to life, and a team of ten bronze rankers with their somewhat larger cohort of six iron rankers stepped through.

“What do you want to do, boss?” Roscoe asked through voice chat. “Fight them for possession or the room or let them have it?”

At bronze rank, Nara could now connect 100 people through voice chat. Everyone in the part was included in a general chat, while the team had their own special chat.

“We observe. If they show aggression, we relinquish the room,” Sen decided.

“Roscoe,” their guide greeted. The entire party of 17 (ten bronze rankers, one bronze guide, and 6 iron rankers) was a fair bit more than theirs. They were majority leonid, so their average height shot past John, creating an imposing immediate impact, like a team of American footballers fronting up. It may have scared other bronze rank parties, but Nara hadn’t been scared by just height for a long time.

“Myrna,” Roscoe greeted genially back. “Here for the room?”

She crossed her arms, tail flicking. She cast a quick glance at their party, then back to hers.

“This isn’t suited for your small team, so we’ll be taking it.”

Her tone and choice expression annoyed everyone in the party, but this wasn’t a battle Sen was willing to fight.

“As you wish, milady. I am willing to concede to the slower guide,” Roscoe said, with just enough cheek and sass that Myrna didn’t feel very quite so victorious.

She had expected them to fight her for it. The traditional Kallid way of challenge. She wanted the fight, and they didn’t grant it. “Spineless,” she muttered under her breath as they passed, but it was loud enough for all bronze rankers to hear it. They all had excellent hearing.

Sen paused his steps, weighing his options. He wasn’t quick to anger, but he didn’t tolerate insults towards his team.

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He decided against it. It was a no bark and no bite insult, one flung half-heartedly. No one cared, not even Eufemia, who may occasionally rise to the challenge with her own scathing counter-insults. Eufemia, despite her outside attitude, always chose her time and place. Her ability to completely put on a mask and so thorough it covered every inch of her skin surpassed Encio’s ability to counter-plan and Sen’s ability to strategize.

Sen passed through the portal, not sparing another glance.

*****

It was another weekend when Nara experienced her first proper challenge (Theodore didn’t count since she had never agreed). A strong leonid standing tall with hands on hips stood in her path in Kallid. He was unsurprisingly shirtless, paired with a short pants that elicited the image of college students in Canada running around the dead of winter with nothing but shorts. Red skin? Nah, I’m not cold.

At this point she was starting to wonder if the leonid’s resistance to cold should have been included as a racial ability. It was paired with an equal distaste of heat, so maybe cosmic rules decided it balanced itself out and didn’t warrant taking up one slot of six.

“Are you the Nara that defeated Erik at the gate?” The leonid asked with a booming voice—a little too loud. It drew the attention and iron of the normal folk around, whose reactions varied from standing at a distance eating ‘popcorn’ to watch the chaos, or fast walking away to avoid the headache. If they stopped for every streetside brawl, work wouldn’t get done.

“If I am?”

“I request a sparring challenge!”

“With me?” Nara asked, “Erik wasn’t exactly a hard challenge.”

The leonid guffawed. He thought the same.

“He’s my cousin,” the leonid said, “The adventuring business wasn’t for him.”

“I don’t mind a spar,” Nara said. “But even if I lose, I want to spar with weapons some other time. Hand-to-hand isn’t my sort of thing, and I’m looking for some variety.”

“I would never turn down a counterchallenge,” the leonid said, shifting into a fighting stance. “I’m Darren.”

“Nara. Pleasure.”

Darren was an adventurer: She could immediately tell from the sharpness and efficiency of the way he moved. Core users could be skilled, but unless they’ve slugged it out with monsters or other essence users repeatedly for hours at a time, they never really had that sharp energy-conserving edge, which persisted even as you’d unleash your most powerful blows.

This fight started traditionally; sharp jabs whistled past her face, which Nara still avoided with ease. Kallid sparring worked with passives only, whatever you had. It meant most leonids had a strength and speed advantage, but Nara kept her damage resistance, enhanced spatial awareness, and reflexes. Powerful blows were only effective if they hit.

The fighting evolved, shifting into variety. Spinning kicks, parries, and attempts to grapple and throw. Nara wouldn’t be able to shimmy onto Darren like she had Erik—he was too guarded and too skillful. To her delight, the outcome of the battle was still up in the air.

They flowed across the street, even leaping onto roofs. They were both careful not to damage their surroundings. Keeping challenges ability-free made that feat easier, and they could dedicate more attention to fine control. She had thought Kallidian brawling to be a rowdy ruleless thing, but she was starting to appreciate the subtleties to it as she discovered them. Avoiding unnecessary damage, using your surroundings, and limiting your abilities to just passives.

Darren’s blows were unrelenting power. He was the heavy brawler type, like Sen, that was well aware of the limits of power they could put into every blow without running out of steam. They were supposedly the most common type of frontline fighter, and Nara bitterly muttered that it happened to be the type she was worst against.

She saw her chance with a wire that hung across the street, draped with banners, signposts, and flags. She leapt onto it, balancing on top despite her weight. It was surprisingly sturdy, built to withstand Kallid’s harsh winds.

Darren stopped before the wire, his bare feet on tiled roof.

Come here, she arched with her finger. If you dare.

He pushed across with an exuberant roar, flinging himself across the chasm reminiscent of parkour training that many essence users shared in. It was a flying tackle—one Darren knew had little chance to succeed.

He wasn’t one to turn down a provocation, success rate be damned.

Nara pressed down on the wire with shifted weight, then let it snap upwards. A signpost smacked him in the face, and he grunted. More importantly, a cloth banner tangled itself around his leg. Nara dropped beneath the wire, shifting it’s position again, and letting the leonid plunge towards emptiness. Momentum largely arrested, the banner pulled back, proudly boasting the tensile strength and quality of its make: Dashl’s Magical Haberdasher—strong enough to sharpen your claws on.

He started to swing. Midway through his arc, the banner uncoiled, and he dropped towards the ground. Bronze rankers had catlike reflexes (the comparison was absolutely not because she was fighting a leonid), and Darren righted himself mid-air. Nara launched up from the ground, thrusting forwards with her knee, and catching him in the back mid-turn.

No impact frame, no cartoon X-ray with black flesh and white bone, and no comical bone crack. The force did punt Darren through the air into the street, where he smacked into the stone wall of a local respectable establishment made less respectable by the outside brawl. Or perhaps, more respectable. She wasn’t quite sure how the locals perceived it. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough force to collapse the wall. They were built particularly sturdy around here.

She dashed forward, throwing out a punch to Darren’s face, but stopped a hair’s breadth away from actually connecting. “I don’t think I ever really figured out when one person wins. Beating each other into submission is really difficult at bronze rank.”

Darren, still against the wall, shrugged.

“It’s when it feels like a win. I think you won.”

“I think so too,” she said smugly, and offered her hand to help him up.

He took it, and he lifted from his seated position.

Their heads turned in the same direction when they heard a clatter the next street over. Shouts and yells, and the sounds Nara identified as ‘coming to blows’. They met each other’s gaze and shared a companionable grin.

It was just another day in Kallid.